Joe Diebes: CHRONOLOGY

Oct.14, 2010 - Jan. 8, 2011

Opening reception: October 14 6 - 8pm

Paul Rodgers/9W is pleased to present its second solo exhibition of interdisciplinary artist Joe Diebes. The exhibition will feature the video installation, Scherzo, which will be presented concurrently at the Liverpool Biennial, and several other works incorporating video and works on paper.

Scherzo is a video installation that explores the limits of human virtuosity and the convergence of human and machine. The artist filmed cellist Rubin Kodheli from eight different camera angles as he played various musical phrases at speeds which challenge the human hand. The virtuoso's desire to achieve machine-like speed and endurance is realized in both exhilarating and disturbing dimensions as his performance is fragmented and recombined on the fly by a computer to produce an infinitely extended musical climax. The classical logic of preparation, climax, and denouement is replaced by a technologically hyper-charged present.

This elimination of sequential logic is carried over into a series of process works based in the artist’s anachronistic act of hand copying musical scores. Short circuiting the strategies of visual art and classical music, Diebes addresses a cultural moment in which our real time information culture collides with the reading and writing cultures of the past. Rather than simply deliver contemporary art over to technology, Diebes conceives of it as the terrain on which machines and the biology of human identity meet along the shifting limits that Robert Smithson spoke of in his philosophical writings on art. We are left with an imprint of the human algorithm producing information without an end in sight.

Joe Diebes’ background includes a degree in Literature and Philosophy from Yale University, composition studies at Juilliard, and private sessions with music/art pioneer La Monte Young. From 1996-2003 he was the musical force behind the arts collective GAle GAtes et al., described by The New York Times as “an adventurous troupe with one foot in the world of postmodern art and the other in downtown performance.” He has received commissions from organizations such as the College Art Association, MATA, The Torino ’06 Winter Olympics, and The Noguchi Museum. His work has been exhibited internationally at numerous institutions including The UCLA Hammer Museum, Yuanfen New Media Gallery (Beijing), the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, and the 2010 Liverpool Biennial.

A catalogue for CHRONOLOGY with text by Ombretta Agrò Andruff will be available at the gallery.